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However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. Barry Seal. Mermelstein, who had told the DEA of the murder contract after his arrest in 1985, testified that Ochoa, Escobar, and Cardona had asked him to take the contract and provided him with money and weapons to do the job. Barry Seal made a killing selling drugs for the Ochoa brothers, but after being outed as a key DEA informant, he was a marked man. They married in 1974. operative extraordinaire - is hardly a familiar name in American politics. In 1981, he was making daily deposits of $50,000 into an account at a bank in the Bahamas. Despus de haber trabajado como piloto de TWA, la mayor. As the cocaine was being loaded onto his plane, Seal noticed that the remote control for the camera was malfunctioning. Ed Duffard, Seals first flight instructor, once recalled how Seal could fly with the best of them, according to Baton Rouges 225 Magazine. A leak regarding the operation came to light before Seal's second trip. American Made is one of many "so crazy, it must be real" stories that have hit Hollywood in the form of a major action movie in recent years. . He had been arrested in 1972 by the U.S. Customs Service for trying to fly 1,350 pounds of plastic explosives to anti-Castro Cubans via Mexico. [32], However, the Nicaragua undercover operation came to an end soon after Seal's return from his second trip when it was reported in the press. Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. -Daily Mail Online. The second indictment charged Seal and three others with multiple counts of possession and distribution of methaqualone, phenobarbital, and meperidine.[16]. He was one of the youngest 707 command pilots in the TWA fleet. They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. Soon, Seal relocated his smuggling operations to Mena, Arkansas. This doesn't add up with the true story. [66][67] Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. American Made (2017) The Real Barry Seal (Universal Pictures) . Instead the Times ran a brief item in its Sunday national edition (7/31/88) quoting President Reagans weekly radio broadcast about how Sandinista officials are still involved in drug trafficking. Adler "Barry" Seal's third wife and the three children she had with him did not violate the slain drug smuggler-turned-government informant's privacy rights when they sold the story of his life to . New York, NY 10001. [2], In 1964, Seal joined TWA as a flight engineer and was soon promoted to the first officer, then captain, flying a Boeing 707 on a regular Western Europe route. [14], By 1981, DEA agents in Florida were aware of Seal's smuggling activities. He soon began using his flight skills for another purpose: smuggling. In reality, there is no evidence that Seal was ever involved with the CIA. -The Independent, In the movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) starts working for the Medelln Cartel after they abduct him while he is refueling his plane and then make him an offer he can't refuse. [59] Another eyewitness saw Quintero-Cruz outside the car, handing the MAC-10 to the car driver through the window after the murder. He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. From earning his pilots license at the age of 16 to his blood-soaked end at the hands of a notorious cartel, Seal certainly got the life of excitement that he so desired. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal's boredom with piloting commercial flights leads him to perform stunts that cause the oxygen masks to fall and frighten passengers. That aspect of who he was has never been disputed. Seal's exploits brought him into close contact with infamous figures like Medelln cartel kingpins Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega and he was . The gunman hurried into a waiting Buick, which sped away. Stevens was the largest investment banker in the entire state of Arkansas. He spent years working for Pablo Escobar and the Medelln cartel, flying tons of cocaine and marijuana into the United States and earning millions of dollars. [40], Soon after the broadcast, the heads of the Florida and Louisiana task forces met to work out an agreement that would allow Seal to continue working with the Florida task force and testify as a witness at trial. The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washington's anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a . Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 - February 19, . The state narcotics agents who were investigating Seal in Baton Rouge sued over their depiction in the series, but the lawsuit was dismissed. [15] The investigation into Seal was part of a major undercover operation called Operation Screamer in which over 80 pilots were eventually indicted. Overall, though, the film captures just how incredible Seals life really was. He was brought to the U.S. where he agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. Barry Seal vol nuevamente a Nicaragua con una misin secreta de la CIA: tomar fotos de los involucrados en el operativo de narcotrfico en el aeropuerto Los Brasiles. In total, he had illegally imported $3 to $5 billion worth of drugs and an estimated 56 tons of cocaine into the U.S., making over 100 flights. The film never set out to be a documentary, according to films director Doug Liman, who described the blockbuster as a fun lie based on a true story, according to TIME. [39] Seal attempted to push back against the investigation by appearing in a television news series broadcast by WBRZ in Baton Rouge in November 1984. . Photos; Visual Stories; Sub Menu 1. -Daily Mail Online, "Mena" refers to the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal moved his operation, smuggling in drugs to a clandestine airfield under the nose of then-Governor Bill Clinton. [50] He had seen Cardona test-fire the murder weapon in Mermelstein's garage and bullets that matched the murder weapon were later extracted from the garage wall by FBI forensics. He would have to operate the rear camera by hand. But the 1984 investigation got derailed when Seal told his handlers that cocaine was being trans-shipped through Nicaragua with the permission of high . They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). When it did, the overloaded plane crashed at the Colombia airfield on takeoff. He once said in an interview, The exciting thing to me is to get yourself into a life threatening situation. Enough cold, hard cash to . Yet, it's also certainly possible that Seal had no involvement with the CIA in the early 1980s at all, given there is nothing to support the claim but rumors. Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. The DEA had been informed before the publication of the Jacoby article, so they were still able to have Seal set up a meeting with the chief cartel supervisor in Miami, Carlos Bustamonte, and arrested him on July 17, along with other cartel employees. In court documents, the family alleged that "lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety" contributed to the fatal crash in the mountains of Colombia. [59], In January 2023, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards denied Vsquez's request for clemency. [49] Although the newspaper report and the arrest of their Miami distributors confirmed that their pilot was DEA, it was not until the cartel members received a copy of Seal's television documentary that they learned McKenzie was Seal. Yes. Hed work at the drop of a hat, and he didnt care, a fellow smuggler later recalled of Seal. Aterriz en el aeropuerto y junto con las personas que lo esperaban carg unos bultos. This operation involved a long, complicated cocaine shipment from Bolivia, refueling in Colombia, refueling again in Texas, and delivering the cocaine in Las Vegas. He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel. [68], Louisiana Attorney General William Guste wrote to United States Attorney General Edwin Meese criticizing the government's failure to protect Seal as a witness. Although Seals first foray into smuggling failed, by 1975, he had started trafficking marijuana between the U.S. and Central and South America. In an effort to reduce or altogether avoid his 10-year prison sentence, Seal first tried to make a deal with a U.S. attorney, volunteering to give up information on the Ochoa family, but the deal was rejected. Synopsis. Sep 30, 2017 Stefan Andrews. "He stopped in there and, just like that, he asked me out," says Debbie. The cartel was happy, as was Seal, who loved evading law enforcement as much as he loved the money. The documentary series, titled "Uncle Sam Wants You", ran on five consecutive evenings. [3] Seal's career with TWA ended in July 1972, when he was arrested for involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle a shipment of plastic explosives to Mexico using a DC-4. Like in the American Made movie, Barry Seal was allowed to fly out of the country and return with illegal drugs that the feds made sure never reached their targets. [31], The DEA plan was to keep Seal working with the cartel on other parts of the supply chain, such as moving cocaine base into Nicaragua from Colombia and inspecting smuggling airfields in Mexico and the U.S. -Daily Mail Online. -Daily Mail Online. [30] Unfortunately, the driver was arrested by local police, and the circumstances of the seizure raised the suspicions of the cartel. He made four trips to Nicaragua that year, allegedly to document the complicity in cocaine trafficking. Despite his successful career, Seal had his eye on more exhilarating endeavors. In an effort to frame the Sandinistas, the CIA installed a hidden camera in Seals C-130 cargo plane (the same plane, incidentally, that later crashed in Nicaragua leading to the capture of Eugene Hasenfus in October 1986). . He is familiar with Barry's work as a pilot, but . "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. They were then picked up by Seal's ground team and transported to the Colombian distributors in Florida. The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. September 29, 2017 12:18 PM EDT. The guns were then flown to the contras in Nicaragua, the suit said. She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. Barry Seal (Photo: Facebook) . Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 He ultimately escaped prosecution, and some believe this was because he was secretly working as an informant for the CIA, though there is no real proof that he ever worked for the agency. On Feb. 19, 1986, Barry Seal, a very prominent CIA drug smuggler and ace pilot, was murdered outside his halfway house in Baton Rouge, LA. Adler Berriman Barry Seal (July 16, 1939 February 19, 1986) was an American airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. They had anticipated Seal would serve substantial time in Florida and were now bound by the agreement Florida and Louisiana drug task forces had made in December 1984. [13] Seal's activities in Mena later became the subject of rumor and controversy, but according to Seal's biographer, former FBI agent Del Hahn, Seal did not use Mena as a drug transshipment point. [5], Ironically, Seal's operations received an important boost when he was arrested and jailed in Honduras on the return leg of a drug-smuggling trip to Ecuador. Exposure of Nicaraguan undercover operation, Criticism of U.S. failure to protect Seal, President's Commission on Organized Crime, "Barry Seal murder in Baton Rouge 25 years ago helped expose Iran-Contra debacle", "Louisiana governor denies parole for man who helped kill Barry Seal for Escobar's cartel", "Slain drug smuggler Barry Seal's daughter sues to halt movie on her father's life", "Family of murdered drug smuggler sue Universal over Tom Cruise film Mena", "North's name bandied about on news leak", "Special Reports - Interview - Drug Wars", "Informants murder puts head on authorities", "TV Reviews: 'Doublecrossed': Story of Drugs and Politics", "Who Killed Barry Seal? According to author Del Hahn, who wrote the book Smuggler's End, next to Barry's yearbook photo was the description, "Full of fun, full of folly" (TIME). In October 1984, a grand jury in Louisiana was convened and began interviewing witnesses against Seal. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). He was the primary witness in three trials: the trial of Saunders and the other Turks and Caicos officials in July; the trial of the cartel distributors in Miami in August; the trial of the cartel distributors who had arranged the shipment of cocaine from Bolivia to Las Vegas, also in August. It was in 1973, the year that followed the end of his second marriage that Seal got married to Deborah DuBois and they . What Journalists, Scholars and Activists Are Saying, The State Department Versus US Reporters in El Salvador, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. A principio de los aos 80 comenz a estar al servicio del Cartel de Medelln para transportar la cocana y en 1984 le . Helicopters would pick up the contraband and transport it to off-loading sites and then on to Ochoa distributors in Miami by car or truck. Despite the movie attempting to pin it on North, Jacoby later said that North was not his source and that it was a deceased Special Forces and CIA guy named Ted Lunger, who at the time worked as a staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. Then, flip through these wild Narco Instagram posts. [45], At Seal's sentencing hearing in January 1986, Judge Frank Polozola acknowledged that he was bound by the agreement, but informed Seal and his lawyer of his dissatisfaction with Seal's failure to receive jail time in Florida, forcing Polozola to sentence Seal to probation on much more serious charges in Louisiana. The lawsuit claims that the pilots were overworked and that the crash happened after a 12-hour workday. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medelln cartel. Now thats excitement.. Facing a heavy sentence, and having been rejected by regional drug task forces in both Florida and Louisiana, Seal decided to try contacting the Vice President's Drug Task Force, a special program in the office of then-Vice President George Bush. Donate today to be a part of this important mission. Photo 1: This is a photo taken July 23, 1955. After a discussion about how to move the increased flow of cocaine, Escobar decided to keep the first shipment in Nicaragua and have Seal return to the States and buy a larger plane. Unfortunately, this meant that angry cartel members would know exactly where to find him. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. [2] He was assassinated in 1986, a hit rumoured to have been ordered by George H. W. Bush, whose personal telephone number was found on . His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry." As part of his reduced sentence, the judge had ordered Barry to spend his nights, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., at a Salvation Army halfway house for six months. Oct. 10, 1986 12 AM PT. Escobar decided to keep the first shipment in Nicaragua and have Seal return to the States and buy a larger plane. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that clearly showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa . Still unknown at the time, the cartel would go on to make hundreds of millions from the explosion of cocaine use in the U.S. Barry Seal, who became known as "El Gordo" (The Fat Man), ended up being an integral part of that success. Arthur, the chief council, investigated the CIA and questioned Col. Oliver North, who is depicted in American Made. Yes, at least according to his wife and others who knew him. Universal Pictures. In 1981, the pilot made his first flight for the Ochoa brothers, a founding family of the cartel. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." Watch an interview with the real Barry Seal where he discusses his undercover mission, and listen to President Ronald Reagan talk about the photos Seal obtained on the mission. Wouldn't it be fun if they were fooling around in a plane and the plane went into the same kind of parabolic arc and they got pinned against the ceiling?" No word of the Hughes hearings appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. -The Independent, Not likely. Barry Seal immediately became a marked man. [7], To expand his smuggling capacity, Seal also hired William Bottoms, his ex-brother-in-law, as a pilot. In her suit, Lisa, who is not depicted in the movie, also claimed that there were factual inaccuracies in the script, including the fact that Barry had five children, not three, and that the movie falsely suggests he was an alcoholic and a reckless pilot. Government attorneys stated that Seal placed himself in danger by refusing to move his family and enter a witness protection program.[69]. After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. The story of Barry Seal has since been made into films such as Doublecrossed (1991), Infiltrator (2016) and American Made (2017). The most important witnesses were Max Mermelstein and Luis Carlos Uribe-Munera. No. Within U.S. airspace, Seal would have people on the ground monitor for any signs his planes were being tailed. Through his cartel contacts in Miami, Seal arranged a meeting using the name Ellis McKenzie (the real name of another Seal associate). [60] All three men's fingerprints were found in the vehicle. He wasn't. He hands wads of cash to a kid on a bike, telling the boy, "You never saw me." It was probably shortly before the operation or thereabouts when he was enlisted to give us proof that the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was actually . Seal was assigned to the Salvation Army's Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge.[48]. American Made, the new Tom Cruise crime drama out Sept. 29, has all the makings of a romp: drug running and arms smuggling. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. They were all sentenced to life in prison. Barry Seal, at the time he died, may have been the . Lisa Seal Frigon, Barry's daughter from his first marriage, sued Universal, claiming that the studio should have purchased Barry's life rights from her, not his third wife Deborah who they paid $350,000. Later, the CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling in exchange for his delivery of . In fact, in early 1986 Barry Seal was threatening GHW Bush to get the IRS off his back or he (Seal) was going to blow the whistle on the Contra scheme and CIA drug smuggling. Though hed done his job as an informant, Seal was still sentenced to six months of house arrest at a Salvation Army halfway house in Baton Rouge. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot . Nicaragua, where Seal flew a cocaine shipment in a C-123 outfitted with cameras to prove that Nicaragua's Sandinista government was involved with the drug . No. In yet another conspiracy-stoking morsel, the C-123 used by Seal was the same one later piloted by Eugene Hasenfus when he was shot down over Nicaragua while piloting illegal U.S. arms shipments . Discerning fact from fiction about Barry Seal, who was killed Feb. 19, 1986, in Baton Rouge by machine gun-wielding Colombian hit men, is a difficult endeavor. [29], Seal made one more trip to Nicaragua on July 7, bringing money to Escobar to pay the Nicaraguans for landing rights. . Also, Mr. Seal, who also went by the name Bill Elders as well as variations of his real name, "testifies he made 6 or 7 hundred thousand dollars in trafficking drugs after he went to work for . Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. Seal took a blurry snapshot which purported to show himself with a high-level Nicaraguan official named Federico Vaughn, and a Colombian drug czar unloading bags of cocaine at an airstrip in Nicaragua. In his research for the book, the only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA. Seal's story is the focus of the . As author Del Hahn states in his book about Barry Seal's life, Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, there is no evidence to support claims that Barry Seal worked for the CIA. Later, after Seal's cover was suspiciously blown, President Reagan used the photo shown below in a 1986 television address to the nation. Tom Cruise is moving on from his Mummy -fied adventures in 2017, with his next big release, American Made, hitting theaters soon. 1988 Ed. Subcommittee chairman William J. Hughes strongly suggested that North was the source of the leak, but Representative Bill McCollum said, "we don't know who leaked this. Born: 19-Jul-1939 Birthplace: Baton Rouge, LA Died: 19-Feb-1986 Location of death: Baton Rouge, LA Cause of death: Murder Remains: Buried, Greenoaks Memorial Park, Baton Rouge, LA Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Criminal, Government Nationality: United States Executive summary: DEA informant, CIA contract pilot Barry emerges from the plane covered in cocaine. All three were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. Things became worse when a report in the Washington Times on July 17 . "I trusted him so I didn't ask questions," says Debbie. Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. You can also support FAIR on Patreon! And Tomas Borges, the Ortega brothers equivalent of the Gestapo chief, was one of the overseers of drug shipments of planeloads destined to Mena air strip, in Arkansas, in 1983. [25] Vaughan was an aide to Tomas Borge, Nicaraguan Minister of the Interior. No. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, Yes. 5 Jackson Stevens. Photo credit: Peter Sutton. [34] Although not a complete account, it gave enough information to spell an end to Seal's work with the cartel, and to the DEA's hopes of capturing the cartel leaders outside of Colombia. A July 17, 1984 front-page Washington Times article by Edmund Jacoby described a link between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Medelln drug cartel. Barry Seal with his Wife Deborah DeBois and their kids. Yes. [50] Before Mermelstein had located Seal, however, he was arrested by a federal task force in June 1985. [7] At his peak, he earned as much as $500,000 per flight transporting shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. Mermelstein testified that he accepted the contract, believing that a refusal would mean death. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. Some stories are stranger than fiction. Plumlee also said he is in the infamous "Mexico City" picture, seated across the table from Seal and peering out from behind his jacket. Schafer recruits Seal to take reconnaissance photos of guerillas operating in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, wooing him with a super-fast, super-nimble twin engine plane. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. No of Kids with Barry: Dean, Aaron, and Christina Seal. [61], Seal was married three times. As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information. -Good Morning America. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. Sixteen year-old Baton Rouge Civil Air Patrol cadet Barry Seal boards a U.S. Air Force plane on July 23, 1955 to fly to a two week training camp at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he will meet fellow cadet Lee Harvey Oswald . The case was eventually dismissed in 1974 for prosecutorial misconduct, but in the meantime TWA fired Seal, who had falsely taken medical leave to participate in the scheme. -TIME. Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. Wikimedia CommonsTom Cruise portrays Barry Seal in the 2017 film American Made.. No. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. Investigators are still trying to separate myth from reality. [8], In 1981, Seal began smuggling cocaine for the Medelln Cartel. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal.